As students across the U.S. go back to school this year, a slew of new laws, policies, and hostile attitudes have meant that queer and trans young people are walking into environments that seek to erase them. In American Bully, Them reports on how anti-LGBTQ+ panic and political agendas are playing out in classrooms, libraries, and school board meetings nationwide — and why we should all be fighting back. Read more from this ongoing series here.
When first grade teacher Jake Daggett posted a photo of himself holding a mug with the phrase “Ask me about my pronouns” on it to Instagram, he didn’t imagine it would lead to a massive right-wing online hate campaign. But after the Wisconsin teacher’s post was picked up by LibsofTikTok — a right-wing Twitter account infamous for targeting teachers and LGBTQ+ people with incendiary language and accusations — the barrage of hate comments was swift and unrelenting.
“Honestly, what was so interesting is that it was one of the most mild posts — like, I've made posts about things that are way more than just a mug. I've talked about my partner, and books about girls with two dads, and more,” Daggett told Them. “It was bizarre to me that they chose that image out of it all.”
Daggett has substantial followings on Instagram and TikTok, where he shares literacy and phonics instruction strategies that he uses in his own classroom at a public school in Milwaukee. But he had to take a break from social media after LibsofTikTok posted the photo, which included his username, as well as the name of the district where he teaches.
“They have amassed a huge right wing extremist following that will do their dirty work for them,” Daggett told Them. “I started to get death threats. A lot of comments about showing up to the school and beating me, some about sending me through a wood chipper. Others saying that I should be hanged. I got images of a rainbow cartoon with a noose around the neck.”
As schools increasingly become a battleground in the ongoing culture wars, queer teachers like Daggett are sitting squarely in the crosshairs. With September ushering in a new school year, LGBTQ+ teachers across the country are bracing themselves for another year of angry parents, conservative furor, and explosive school board meetings. When coupled with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and an already underfunded and overworked workforce that is dropping out of the profession in the thousands, LGBTQ+ teachers face a multitude of obstacles to doing their jobs.
Right-wing legislation targeting teachers and schools has proliferated across the country over the past several years, with lawmakers introducing bills targeting classroom discussions of LGBTQ+ topics, lessons about race and racism, and book bans left and right. As their jobs become increasingly politicized, and under intense scrutiny from political commentators on all sides, teachers are reporting that they are finding it increasingly difficult to do their jobs, particularly in states like Florida and Texas.
While legislative campaigns span across the country, they’ve trickled down to the school board level, where conservative groups are organizing recalls and book bans, promoting policies that out trans students to their parents, and targeting teachers who stand up for LGBTQ+ rights. Groups like Moms for Liberty, the organization behind many of the “parental rights in education” bills introduced this year, are also back in session for the fall, bringing signs and initiating heated debates that extend school board meetings for hours.
One teacher told Them that Moms for Liberty protestors have been at every single one of their school board’s meetings since the school year’s start nearly a month ago. Another had to bow out of being interviewed with just a few hours notice; she told Them that members of the militant far-right Proud Boys group had made an appearance at that week’s school board meeting, targeting her for being gay, and that being visible was just too dangerous for her at the moment.
And Jake Daggett is unfortunately far from the only teacher in the crosshairs of LibsofTikTok as of late. “I replied to something on Twitter in defense of [Daggett]. LibsofTikTok took my reply out of context, and put it with a picture that I had already shared a year ago,” said Mitchel Meighen, a friend of Daggett’s and a teacher in a Chicago public school district. “And then it was a mob of exactly what you can imagine — replies and threats and direct messages that were threats. Everything from just dumb comments to direct threats.”
While the account didn’t actively share any identifying information about Meighen beyond his name and Twitter handle, it didn’t have to; its 1.3 million followers did the rest. “About a week later, I got a letter in the mail, with my name and address, but no return address,” Meighen says. “I opened it, and it was like there was the progress pride flag — four of those flags, arranged into a swastika, printed out on this letter that was mailed to my house.”
For some teachers, the benefits of being out to students and supporting queer kids have come to outweigh the costs. Ro Wilson’s middle school classroom played host to an informal GSA, with a group of queer students whom he had come out to in the wake of a homophobic incident and subsequent restorative conversations. “I chose to come out to them, and it’s something that they were really grateful for,” Wilson told Them. “They were like, ‘I wish I had more teachers that were visibly queer — it would have made me feel so much safer.’”
But despite this, Wilson plans to continue to not be publicly out at school this year, though she makes clear that she is an ally when introducing herself at the beginning of the year. “Unfortunately, I don't think that this school is the place where a teacher can truly just be themselves without being thrown back in our faces,” he added.
Other teachers have noted that the political climate is taking its toll not just in school board meetings or online circles, but among the very kids they teach. Rosie (whose name has been changed for privacy) taught at a Vermont high school, where she ran the school’s GSA along with a fellow queer teacher until the end of this past school year. She says she quit due to repeated homophobic harassment from students and a lack of administrative support in addressing it.
“The boldness in which it's cool to be homophobic again, it feels like it's the ‘90s,” Rosie told Them, adding that she believes the current political climate is influencing students, particularly those at the high school level. “They’re not just being homophobic, they're being homophobic because President Trump and his people are all fully homophobic, so now they get to wrap it up in like a political ideal and act like it's their beliefs. I bet you these kids wouldn't be thinking twice about trans people if Fox News wasn’t spouting off at home.”
Nevertheless, many queer teachers plan to continue to show up and support their queer students, regardless of right-wing harassment. “Even if my students don't necessarily see themselves reflected in my experiences, I’m somebody that they can come to and ask questions,” said Meighen. “Just talking it through with them, and connecting them with additional supports, and answering questions, and being a sounding board for them when they have told their parents, starting the GSAs… just having that open dialogue where they can create that space for themselves in school I think is just awesome.”
Those who plan to remain in the field acknowledge that structural changes and administrative support are necessary in order for queer teachers to succeed and feel supported in the current environment. Allison Harbin, a teacher at a New Jersey charter school, believes they need the ability to feel safe in their classrooms, and that they need to have autonomy. “Queer teachers need to feel safe in the classroom just as much as queer students do,” she said. “We don't have a functioning education system now, but what we do have is getting eroded, and the gays are like a canary in the coal mine.”
Queer teachers like Harbin are reporting feeling increasingly unsafe in the current political climate, with educators in states like Florida and Texas considering leaving the field if things get worse. And a recent survey from EdWeek Research Center found that four in 10 educators overall feel less safe in their schools than they used to, due to factors like school shootings, increased aggression from parents, and an overall angry political climate.
Rosie notes that support is necessary now more than ever, and it can’t just come from teachers or administrators. In the face of a conversation dominated by right-wing parents’ rights groups, she says that queer parents, and parents of queer youth, need to be louder. “If you can create a critical mass of loud parents that every admin needs to hear from and has to appease… I think that is truly the way.”
And ultimately, queer teachers are going to keep advocating for their students no matter what happens. While Wilson no longer teaches the students who were in her informal GSA, she still sees them in the hallways, and they remind her that helping them was one of the “most rewarding” things she’s ever done as a teacher.
“I think about the teachers that were most impactful to me, and it's the ones that made me feel seen,” he said. “I feel very lucky that they were willing to share themselves with me like that.”
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